Fouts should explain birth date discrepancy

A s the chief elected official of Michigan's third- largest city, Warren Mayor James Fouts tries to instill at City Hall his philosophy, "We work for Warren taxpayers," and credits municipal workers for their responsiveness to residents.

He also touts transparency when it comes to city finances.

But on the lingering issue of his birth year, Fouts is evasive at best. He recently renewed his driver's license - waiting four months and until after the election to do so - but questions remain.

We think the mayor owes the public an explanation.

Advertisement

Days after his license expired on Aug. 9, the day after his birthday, Fouts said he mistakenly thought it lapsed at the end of the month, he felt embarrassed and he planned to renew it the next day.

"There is no excuse for it. It's an oversight, that's all," he said at the time.

Acting on a tip, a television news crew surprised the mayor on Dec. 21 as he arrived at the rear of a Secretary of State's branch in Sterling Heights, driven there by an unidentified individual although sources say the driver was Bill Gambill, a mayoral appointee. They pulled up nearly an hour before the front doors opened to the folks waiting in line.

Fouts didn't get out, and the driver pulled away, certainly, because he saw the news crew.

Secretary of State officials insisted the mayor was not afforded special treatment, adding that people can make arrangements for nonroutine matters. The next day, Fouts provided documentation at a branch in St. Clair Shores that showed his birth date is Aug. 8, 1942, two years earlier than state records had shown, a conflict with Social Security Administration records.

The mayor subsequently told a weekly newspaper that 1944 had been his birthday "since some time in college" and "It's been that since way back then."

Huh?

When he omitted his birth date from his affidavit of candidacy last May, three of his five opponents in the primary election filed a lawsuit against the Warren Election Commission, seeking to have him and another mayoral hopeful tossed off the ballot for not revealing when they were born. Fouts survived that political scare and captured a whopping 81 percent of the vote in November against former councilwoman Kathy Vogt - one of the three plaintiffs - in the largest mayoral landslide in the city's history. To the mayor's backers, age doesn't matter.

Fouts hasn't returned recent phone calls to The Macomb Daily. We're not suggesting that being 69 instead of 67 hurts the hard-working mayor's ability to lead the city. In 2007 and 2003, he wrote on his candidacy declaration that his birth year was 1944. Making a false statement on the affidavits is perjury, although the city's police commissioner said the statute of limitations for any alleged violation expired.

It's worth noting that Fouts also wrote 1944 when he renewed his driver's license in 2007, 2003 and 1999 - the last year on state files - according to the Secretary of State. No investigation is planned.

While former mayor Mark Steenbergh was at the helm, Fouts, then serving as City Council president, often blasted his predecessor for accepting a leased city SUV and for being chauffeured by a Warren police officer. Had Steenbergh been dogged by a birth date controversy, Fouts likely would have led the chorus of questions.

By refusing to clarify his own 2-year discrepancy, the current mayor helps fuel public speculation about what he's hiding.